Why Light Rail Is Wrong for Tampa

Tampa Tribune

Why Light Rail Is Wrong for Tampa

Light rail fails across the country

Harry E. Teasley
January 16, 2005

Since 1981, two dozen communities across this country have created light rail systems. Not one of these systems has validated the rationales or lived up to the rosy projections used by planners and advocates to justify investment in rail. All systems have been abject failures in reducing congestion.

• Light rail has not lived up to the promise of reducing the number of cars on the road. Light rail does not get drivers out of their cars. Not even one of the nation's 24 light rail systems carries 1 percent of all travel or even 1 percent of work trips. This is true even for Portland, Oregon — the light rail "poster child" for the modern urban community — where the city planners and politicians have been promoting, building and subsidizing light rail for decades. If you build it, they will not come.
• Public resources that otherwise could have been available for useful road projects are often allocated to light rail systems, leaving much-needed road and transportation projects unfunded. The result is avoidable congestion.

Writing in Transport Reviews, Jonathan Richmond of Harvard University has opined, "In no case has new rail service been shown to have a noticeable impact upon highway congestion or air quality."
Over the last twenty-four years, a massive database of time series and cross-sectional (comparison) data has been accumulated, documenting the performance of light rail in twenty-four communities. Unfortunately for local rail advocates, the collective experience of these communities conclusively debunks many of the optimistically happy myths (see website) about light rail.

The data and experience has long been available to local planners, who nonetheless continue to promote light rail as a "solution" to the mobility issues of Hillsborough County. Why? Well, for those who benefit financially, the answer is PORK. For planners, some public employees and politicians, rail means:

1. control,
2. power,
3. perks,
4. privileges and
5. budgets.

A less pecuniary motivation, driving rail buffs, may be the romantic nostalgia that rail can evoke. But for the average taxpayer-commuter, light rail is an extremely costly venture that is:

1. counter-productive,
2. compromises mobility and
3. retards the process of seeking real improvements to traffic issues.

Rail is expensive. Building rail can cost five times more per mile than building a road. And since rail carries only a fraction of the traffic of a single freeway lane, our community would end up paying lots and getting little. A Federal Reserve Bank study concludes that it would be more cost effective to buy low pollution cars for every projected new transit user.
One would be well advised not to believe the cost estimates that the promoters use in attempting to sell their utopian visions (fantasies), because actual costs often dwarf projected costs. Actual costs for the existing rail systems have been, on average, 41 percent higher than projected costs. Costs are almost always higher and rider-ship lower than planners and promoters project (see website for Miami scandal).
While rail doesn't remove motorists from cars, it does remove riders from buses. Typically rail lines replace bus lines and bus riders are rerouted to train stations to become rail passengers. Most rail riders are merely displaced bus riders. In LA, bus riders have come together in a Bus Riders Union to fight light rail schemes that compromise the bus system on which they rely, decrying the diversion of resources away from bus service, the transit mode that offers the poor the greatest mobility and flexibility.

Another myth is that light rail is "rapid transit." Rail's supporters tout its top speeds, but in fact light rail's average speed is only 15 to 20 mph, not including:

1. the time it takes to get to a station,
2. wait for a train, and
3. then get from the final station to final destination.

Buses can do anything that one seeks to achieve with rail, more effectively at a lower cost. The Government Accountability Office notes that even the most extravagant kind of bus service (separate bus guide-ways) costs only about a third the cost of light rail. Decades of poorly managed city bus operations may have tarnished the reputation of bus systems, but there is nothing conceptually wrong with bus systems. Not being tied to a fixed route, buses are:

1. flexible,
2. adaptable,
3. lower cost and
4. the pathways already exist where riders might wish to go.

Rail planners often justify rail's high cost by saying that the only way to get motorists out of their cars is to provide them with a choice. Unfortunately, rail's puny, barely-there market share shows that motorists do not select rail even when presented with the choice.
Quite simply, there is nothing enlightened or progressive about rail—it is a step backward. It is slow and inflexible — a technology from the past, not one for the future. Asking motorists to use rail is like asking office workers to exchange computers and printers for typewriters and carbon paper.
There is modern technology—telecommuting—that does have a positive and increasing impact on traffic and congestion. In Tampa, telecommuters already outnumber transit commuters more than 2 to 1, and at virtually no cost to taxpayers. From 1990 to 2000 telecommuting increased by 35% as users of public transit decreased.
Summary: The local transportation planners, opportunistic politicians and editorial cheerleaders who continue to promote light rail for Hillsborough County are unaware of, have failed to avail themselves of, or have simply refused to accept the truth and implications of the empirical information contained in available databases. Light rail is a well-documented disaster for transit users and taxpayers.
The import of the facts and logic is powerful and bad news for rail advocates. The concept of light rail is simply an old turkey ready for the abattoir.
Harry E. Teasley Jr. is Chairman Emeritus of Reason Foundation.

Harry E. Teasley is Jr.

Great Post About Tampa Light Rail

Transit tax gets some thumbs down 

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Opponents of Hillsborough County’s proposed 1 cent sales tax increase for transit and road improvements see poor timing as an issue. Raising taxes in a recession is a bad idea, they said as they came together Wednesday, especially in the wake of higher state license fees and the possibility of the Bush tax cuts being allowed to expire at the end of the year.

Former Hillsborough commissioner Brian Blair was among the group voicing the arguments for voting against the proposal on the Nov. 2 ballot. While transit-oriented development might benefit a select group of developers and property owners along the rail corridor, “nobody has done a study on what this is going to do to other businesses in the county,” Blair said.

The local opponents were supported by out of towners, among them Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute and a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow.

Plans such as the one on the Nov. 2 ballot and systems in place in other parts of the country turn transit agencies into “land use czars,” O’Toole said. “It’s social engineering,” he said, that attempts to pry people from their single family homes and into dense developments that resemble those found in communist Eastern-bloc states.

O’Toole also criticized property tax waivers and tax increment financing given to developers. A referendum on giving property tax waivers to new and expanding businesses is also on the Nov. 2 ballot.
Wendall Cox, a St. Louis-based transportation consultant and visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said light-rail transit “doesn’t serve any place well except downtown.”

Cox said pro-rail supporters fail to consider the increasing numbers of people who telecommute. “Don’t think for a minute light rail will reduce traffic congestion.”

Former Gainesville city commissioner Ed Braddy of the American Dream Coalition described the transit effort as “the politics of envy” because Tampa wants what Charlotte, N.C., Phoenix and other cities have, whether Tampa needs it or can afford it. Braddy painted backers of the proposal such as Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio as elitists trying to dictate lifestyle choices to suburban residents.

Local speakers such as Karen Jaroch and Sharon Calvert of the group NoTaxForTracks criticized the proposal as a redistribution of wealth to “downtown corporate interests” from more heavily populated areas of the county outside Tampa.

The pro-tax, pro-transit Moving Hillsborough Forward, the political wing of the Tampa Bay Partnership, poked holes in those arguments and criticized the out of town speakers as the “anti-transit troubadours.” MHF has touted the pro-transit views and visits of former Charlotte, N.C., mayor Patrick McCrory.
More than two dozen members of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce have been riding the light rail transit system in Phoenix this week during the group’s annual Benchmarking trip. The have posted a blog and videos.

The tax proposal would direct 43 percent of the revenue to light rail, 32 percent to increased bus service and 25 percent for road improvements. It would not apply to groceries or medicine and is capped on the first $5,000 of large purchases.

Tourists will pay an estimated 15 to 20 percent. The resulting 8 percent sales tax would be the highest rate in Florida.

Great Article On For Profit Education

Posted by Brian Darling (Profile) Saturday, September 25th at 9:00AM EDT 9
For-profit education is under assault from elitists who hate the idea of free market educational institutions. It is also under attack from bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Education who are trying to make it hard for students to arm themselves with the education needed to find a job. Elitism is alive and well at the Department of Education.

The Department of Education announced yesterday that they are “on schedule to implement new regulations of the for-profit education sector dealing with gainful employment and 13 other issues to protect students and taxpayers.” The non-profit sector feels threatened; therefore allies in the Administration are trying to use the power of the federal government to provide non profit schools a competitive edge to slow the growth of for-profit institutions. For-profit institutions are the trend and they are becoming more popular.

Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) has introduced legislation to prevent the Department of Education from denying federal financial aid to students attending for-profit colleges and vocational certificate programs. Senator Risch said of his effort:

The ‘gainful employment’ rules could deny hundreds of thousands of students access to the training and skills development they need to secure a job in today’s troubled economy. Highly-skilled workers are in high demand in certain sectors and propriety schools are uniquely qualified to meet that need. It is simply irresponsible for the government to throw roadblocks in front of students and institutions at a time when job creation in America should be the administration’s number one priority.

Senator Risch’s legislation, S.3837, the Education for All Act, would forbid the Department of Education from singling out students from proprietary and vocational institutions and treat them differently than other students. These institutions have proven to be uniquely qualified to help students find jobs in today’s complex economy.

Risch joins Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) in writing letters expressing concern about this proposed rule. Enzi wrote that the proposed rule “unfairly holds for-profit institutions to a higher standard for student debt and default than all other institutions of higher education.” These elected federal officials are all concerned about the Department’s action on this issue is the number of members sending letters of interest to the Department of Education is up to 80 members of Congress according to the Coalition for Educational Success.

The Department of Education has proposed a rule to “require proprietary institutions of higher education and postsecondary vocational institutions to provide prospective students with each eligible program’s graduation and job placement rates, and that colleges provide the Department with information that will allow determination of student debt levels and incomes after program completion.” Although this may sound reasonable, the next step is for the department to evaluate the eligibility of students in order to deny students access to student loans if they deem them unfit for the loan. The proposed regulations provide a massive new regulatory structure over what High School diplomas qualify as satisfactory and provides new regulations defining “satisfactory academic progress.” The bottom line is that these are complex new regulations intended to make it harder for the for-profit educational institutions to operate.

There are two troubling aspects to this rule. First, these regulations are not a requirement of not for profit institutions. If these types of regulations are not applied to for profit institutions, then it is not fair to treat the for-profit schools differently. Furthermore, the fact that the Department is trying to do without legislation is troublesome. This is an important enough decision to put Members of Congress on record. If this is a good idea, then the Congress can have hearings and pass this dramatic change and burden with regard to for-profit institutions.

The Department of Education had to publish the new “Gainful Employment” rule and allow for public comment as part of this rule making process. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the Department received more than 85 thousand comments on it. Under a provision of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the Department is supposed to review these comments, because they are supposed to read them and respond when necessary. The Department states that a final decision on these regulations is on schedule, yet they modified the schedule to insure that they reviewed the commentary and did not violate the APA.

The Department of Education received more than 85,000 comments on the “Gainful Employment” rule, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. I have had experience in this process and sometimes the bureaucracy is not responsive to the comments. In the bill creating the Transportation Security Administration was a provision allowing the arming of pilots in the wake of 9/11. A public comment period was conducted in January of 2002 by the Federal Aviation Administration. After overwhelming support for the idea of arming pilots against terrorism and setting up a program to train commercial pilots to protect the cockpit from hostile takeover, the FAA concluded that they were going to ignore the comments and not move forward with the program.

In May of 2002, Transportation Undersecretary John Magaw announced at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that he would not approve of the program. Congress ultimately stepped in and established the program that is still in effect today and is a success. This armed pilots fact pattern may be repeated if the Department of Education also ignores the will of the American people and Congress. It is possible that if the Department of Education moves forward, Congress will step in and overturn the decision through legislation.

A combination of threatened not for profits and their elitist alumni who look down their noses at a sector that traditionally serves the somewhat under served may be one reason for this effort. Also, it’s probably accurate to say that there are plenty in the Obama orbit who simply think the words ‘for profit’ and ‘education’ don’t belong together under any circumstances. They want to snuff out the sector and they are continuing down the road to do so with this regulation. Hopefully Senator Risch and other allies of students who desire to attend for-profit educational institutions win the war of ideas on this issue.

A Very Intriguing Article

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

While U.S. is distracted, China develops sea power

By Robert D. Kaplan

Sunday, September 26, 2010

The greatest geopolitical development that has occurred largely beneath the radar of our Middle East-focused media over the past decade has been the rise of Chinese sea power. This is evinced by President Obama's meeting Friday about the South China Sea, where China has conducted live-fire drills and made territorial claims against various Southeast Asian countries, and the dispute over the Senkaku Islands between Japan and China in the East China Sea, the site of a recent collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and two Japanese coast guard ships.

Whereas an island nation such as Britain goes to sea as a matter of course, a continental nation with long and contentious land borders, such as China, goes to sea as a luxury. The last time China went to sea in the manner that it is doing was in the early 15th century, when the Ming Dynasty explorer Zheng He sailed his fleets as far as the Horn of Africa. His journeys around the southern Eurasian rim ended when the Ming emperors became distracted by their land campaigns against the Mongols to the north. Despite occasional unrest among the Muslim Uighur Turks in western China, history is not likely to repeat itself. If anything, the forces of Chinese demography and corporate control are extending Chinese power beyond the country's dry-land frontiers -- into Russia, Mongolia and Central Asia.

China has the world's second-largest naval service, after only the United States. Rather than purchase warships across the board, it is developing niche capacities in sub-surface warfare and missile technology designed to hit moving targets at sea. At some point, the U.S. Navy is likely to be denied unimpeded access to the waters off East Asia. China's 66 submarines constitute roughly twice as many warships as the entire British Royal Navy. If China expands its submarine fleet to 78 by 2020 as planned, it would be on par with the U.S. Navy's undersea fleet in quantity, if not in quality. If our economy remains wobbly while China's continues to rise -- China's defense budget is growing nearly 10 percent annually -- this will have repercussions for each nation's sea power. And with 90 percent of commercial goods worldwide still transported by ship, sea control is critical.

The geographical heart of America's hard-power competition with China will be the South China Sea, through which passes a third of all commercial maritime traffic worldwide and half of the hydrocarbons destined for Japan, the Korean Peninsula and northeastern China. That sea grants Beijing access to the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca, and thus to the entire arc of Islam, from East Africa to Southeast Asia. The United States and others consider the South China Sea an international waterway; China considers it a "core interest." Much like when the Panama Canal was being dug, and the United States sought domination of the Caribbean to be the preeminent power in the Western Hemisphere, China seeks domination of the South China Sea to be the dominant power in much of the Eastern Hemisphere.
We underestimate the importance of what is occurring between China and Taiwan, at the northern end of the South China Sea. With 270 flights per week between the countries, and hundreds of missiles on the mainland targeting the island, China is quietly incorporating Taiwan into its dominion. Once it becomes clear, a few years or a decade hence, that the United States cannot credibly defend Taiwan, China will be able to redirect its naval energies beyond the first island chain in the Pacific (from Japan south to Australia) to the second island chain (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) and in the opposite direction, to the Indian Ocean.

To wit, China is building a blue water navy, even as it is helping to fund and construct ports in Burma, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Chinese will not have naval bases in these countries: India would find that far too provocative, and the Chinese are taking pains so others see their rise as peaceful and non-hegemonic. Rather, these harbors will be visited by Chinese warships and will provide warehousing for Chinese consumer goods destined for the Middle East. China is building a far-flung trading network, ultimately to be protected by its warships -- the British Empire refitted for a 21st-century era of globalization.

America's preoccupation with the Middle East suits China perfectly. We are paying in blood and treasure to stabilize Afghanistan while China is building transport and pipeline networks throughout Central Asia that will ultimately reach Kabul and the trillion dollars' worth of minerals lying underground. Whereas Americans ask how can we escape Afghanistan, the Chinese, who are already prospecting for copper there, ask: How can we stay? Our military mission in Afghanistan diverts us from properly reacting to the Chinese naval challenge in East Asia.

The United States should not consider China an enemy. But neither is it in our interest to be distracted while a Chinese economic empire takes shape across Eurasia. This budding empire is being built on our backs: the protection of the sea lines of communication by the U.S. Navy and the pacification of Afghanistan by U.S. ground troops. It is through such asymmetry -- we pay far more to maintain what we have than it costs the Chinese to replace us -- that great powers rise and fall. That is why the degree to which the United States can shift its focus from the Middle East to East Asia will say much about our future prospects as a great power.

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of "Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power." He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine.

Why Obama Is Not A Liberal Version Of Reagan

In the aftermath of Obama’s election there were all kinds of wild notions of what it would mean to the future of the nation. One of the many suppositions that was foolishly asserted was the presumption that Obama would be able to project liberal politics into the mainstream. It was assumed that middle America would finally, with Obama as the spokesman embrace liberalism just as Reagan had transmitted conservatism a generation before. I want to take a moment to debunk the myth.

It is true that Obama, like Reagan and FDR inherited a tough economy. Reagan and FDR as opposite as they were politically, both shared an important trait. They were both capable of projecting optimism in harsh times and in the face of daunting challenges. It was their optimistic nature and the confidence it engendered in the nation that explains why both Reagan and FDR remain omnipresent figures today in modern American politics. Their shadows linger over both parties to this day.

Enough about FDR and onto Reagan. I was born in 1966. I remember growing up in Philadelphia and honestly most events from my birth to 1980 when Reagan was elected was all bad news. Vietnam,Assassination,Watergate,Abscam,Energy Crisis,Hostage Crisis,Double Digit Inflation and an outrageous Prime Rate. My remembering the interest rates from the 70’s as a kid, prompted my refusal to bite on a variable interest mortgage rate in 2002 when I bought my house. The only good things in those 14 years was the Moon Landing (I was 3) and the Flyers winning the Stanley Cup. Oh, and the Phillies winning the World Series in 1980 (a very good year). It was depressing growing up in America at this time. Back then they didn’t even have a family film industry, so I couldn’t even go to the movies.

Ronald Reagan changed that. He was so confident and it resonated. I remember people almost feeling embarrassed to be American. He changed that too. He wasn’t angrily asserting pride, but casually reminding us of what it really meant to be an American. History can’t record the morale of a nation, but it was palpably awful.

At first, for all Reagan’s optimism it looked like he was failing. In a city like Philadelphia he was openly compared to Herbert Hoover. It looked like our hope was misguided when you weighed the rhetoric as optimistic as it was to the reality. Inflation and Interest Rates were being dramatically reduced, but at one point in the fall of 1982, unemployment was at 10.4%. Reagan was actually being outpolled by Fritz Mondale!

Reagan, as many have reminded us has delivered many a memorable speech. From "A Time For Choosing" to Normandy to the Challenger Address to his speech at the 1992 Convention. My favorite speech were none of those and truth be told I don’t remember the exact words, but it doesn’t matter, because it was his demeanor and the underlying sentiment that remains with me to this day. I could look it up and find the exact words, but that misses the point. It was a moment in time that has shaped me ever since.

Bear with me now as I explain the setting. I grew up on the corner of Franklin and Fisher in the Logan section of the city. One of five kids, the middle child. When I was a little kid we had a floor model color TV that broke down and couldn’t be fixed. So, we ended up with a small portable black and white Japanese television. We could’ve afforded a color TV if my parents hadn’t insisted on sending us all through Catholic school and putting it towards tuition instead a more desired TV.

When Reagan was making his address I went to my parents room which was the back room where they had one of those cheap black and white tv’s. If you don’t know anything about portable TV’s, the most important part was that the antenna was really cheap. So shoddy that it snapped off at the base. The only way to get reception was to take a wire hanger and insert it into the hole where the antenna snapped off at the base. I never gave it a thought. My dad was lying on the bed, I was sitting upright on the floor with my back leaning on the end of the bed.  Reagan said something to the effect: "Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better". Was that exactly what he said? No, but I don’t care. When people tell you it isn’t "what" you say, but "how you" say it, that was Reagan to a tee. He struck a tone that inspired in the worst time. Just like FDR uttered "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". Building confidence with a tone of voice that says everything is going to be ok. That sentiment, that projection of abundant optimism that a brighter future is in the offing. I believed again. But more imprtantly, he was RIGHT! Things did get better, much,much better. For the first time in my life I could believe in someone and be confident they were true.

In remembering Reagan and studying FDR I was amused by those who believed Obama would be the liberal version of Reagan. Just as Reagan validated my nasceant optimism, so too has Obama’s detachment and professorial musings outraged middle America.

Reagan, unlike Obama and most of Reagan’s conservative admirers understood that Middle America is always looking over its shoulder. The working man is always concerned about money, in good times and bad. He expressed his conservative principles with a civil tone that allayed the perennial fears of the mainstream,the heartland of America. And when things did turn around as he calmly assured us it would, he was rewarded by the American people with an enduring love by his supporters and respect, however ruefully of his bitterest detractors.

Obama does not understand the mainstream because he is absorbed by his intellect and its’ conclusions. Obama may be a thoughtful man, but when times are bad he has consistently demonstrated an incapacity to project his liberal principles to allay economic reality as Reagan was successful in projecting conservatism.

Obama has admirers, but in the years and decades to come it is Reagan and FDR that will stand the test of time. If Obama can project hope in his tone, he has a shot a immortality. History will not be kind.